Under Antalya's Sky (Turkey)
Saturday, November 9, 2024
We left the house in the late morning, heading to the nearby airport parking lot, shuttle, formalities, and a quiet flight on a half-empty plane. Three hours eastward, we arrived in pitch-black night. Like everywhere in the world, we entered the city by crossing a vast, garish commercial zone, then the roads turned into streets, then alleys. Eventually, our driver had to stop to move poorly parked scooters so his oversized minibus could pass. We arrived in the middle of the old town, in a huge old house. We’re thrilled. The neighborhood is lively, full of atmosphere. Hungry and exhausted, we ate (very well) at the hotel restaurant, then strolled around. First impressions are promising!
Sunday, November 10, 2024 Antalya In this part of the world, there are some quirks that don’t always suit us infidels! Here in Antalya, the religious influence is still pretty light. You can drink freely, girls can save a lot on fabric—it’s all good, no one’s gonna say anything. But there’s the muezzin. That lanky guy who belts out his tune five times a day from the top of his minaret didn’t spare us this morning. Just a heads-up, we’ve got a two-hour time difference, and this guy starts his serenade at 4 AM, right in the middle of the night. That’s early!
Anyway, we recover, have breakfast, and realize that in terms of revered figures, Atatürk doesn’t take a backseat to the prophet responsible for our nighttime disturbances. We’d already been surprised by how ubiquitous his portrait is, but on the restaurant terrace, we see it’s a full-blown cult. There’s a little altar with rose petals under his portrait. First thing in the morning, the staff lines up to pay their respects, then sings a stirring hymn while some customers stand, hand on heart.
Right after breakfast, we set off like explorers through the old town. It’s incredible how many walls, monuments, and statues have survived from the glorious Greek and Roman eras. Back then, they built things to last!
Sunday, November 10, 2024 Antalya In this part of the world, there are some quirks that don’t always suit us infidels! Here in Antalya, the religious influence is still pretty light. You can drink freely, girls can save a lot on fabric—it’s all good, no one’s gonna say anything. But there’s the muezzin. That lanky guy who belts out his tune five times a day from the top of his minaret didn’t spare us this morning. Just a heads-up, we’ve got a two-hour time difference, and this guy starts his serenade at 4 AM, right in the middle of the night. That’s early!
Anyway, we recover, have breakfast, and realize that in terms of revered figures, Atatürk doesn’t take a backseat to the prophet responsible for our nighttime disturbances. We’d already been surprised by how ubiquitous his portrait is, but on the restaurant terrace, we see it’s a full-blown cult. There’s a little altar with rose petals under his portrait. First thing in the morning, the staff lines up to pay their respects, then sings a stirring hymn while some customers stand, hand on heart.
Right after breakfast, we set off like explorers through the old town. It’s incredible how many walls, monuments, and statues have survived from the glorious Greek and Roman eras. Back then, they built things to last!
It’s a tiny little agency where a dad got his daughter to translate into English. They gave us a decent car, a Fiat Egea Cross covered in scratches but it’ll do the job.
Right away, we head to the Düden Waterfalls to test out our newfound freedom…
The weather's great, so we keep walking along the coast...
It’s a site of ruins, but mostly a seaside spot with long stretches of white sand. We end up in mass tourism territory—the kind we’d hoped to avoid. But here, everything’s in euros, the signs are in German, and you hear Schiller’s language everywhere. It’s Germania in all its glory! 
Then we headed back. That’s when we hit the massive evening traffic jams on the outskirts of the city. A nightmare. We arrived completely exhausted.
We had dinner a bit on a whim. It was okay, but the wine was awful and the price was high, with a 10% service charge that was clearly over the top.…
Tourists who end up in Antalya don’t have to do much. But there’s one must-see: Pamukkale. Our French friends, who we chat with whenever we run into each other, went there yesterday. The 5-day tourist version. For the price of a small Mercedes (the kind every sixty-year-old *has* to buy his wife for her 25th birthday), a bus picks you up at the crack of dawn and takes you on a 3-hour trip with a whole bunch of Germans. They drop you off at the top of the mountain, where the amphitheater is, and you walk down the slope lined with ancient stones to the incredible limestone glacier that flows down to the village where the bus gathers everyone up—hop hop hop—then it’s back where you started, another 3 hours with the same group, now emboldened, everyone knowing each other, breaking into folk songs. Nothing like the beautiful Black Forest tunes to make the time fly. As for us, we’re making the most of our car. Sure, it’s still 3 hours, but with some really fascinating podcasts, and besides, we booked a hotel for the night to take the pressure off the schedule.…
At the top, suddenly, the landscape changes completely. After feeling like the Markstein in winter, it now resembles the Sinai Desert. A desert densely populated with scattered ruins—that’s Hierapolis, a city that developed in the 2nd century BC thanks to the presence of thermal springs.
Night begins to fall, the colors shift, and we descend along this incredible landscape.
Back home 
We're wandering around. There's a show kinda like "Eat It," with competitions, trophies, and medals awarded to young chefs amid cheers you can hear from far away!
And indeed, there are wild little flames everywhere, here since forever. They’re methane emissions that ignite on contact with the air.
Olympos is just around the corner... 
We continued our walk all the way to the sea…
Remote working…
It was supposed to be a rainy Sunday. It almost was. The early morning seemed to give us a few openings, so we tried a trip up into the heights to see the city of Termessos.
We ended the day at our favorite pizzeria. 
